


The Rattlesnakes

by luulapants



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon Backstory, Gen, Magic, Skinwalker, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:21:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24194242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luulapants/pseuds/luulapants
Summary: What happened among the skinwalkers just before Kira met them.----I got mad thinking about how the skinwalkers in Teen Wolf didn't even get names, so here we are! This is a glimpse into my headcanon for them and how their magic and world works.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 12





	The Rattlesnakes

A noisy gasp hissed through the house, echoing against the cool clay walls. Nascha pushed up onto her elbows, her hammock swaying with the movement. She looked across the room. Sahkyo had not yet lifted her head, but met Nascha’s eyes with a curious expression. She shook her head once. Together, they turned toward Doli. She lay in her hammock, staring at the ceiling. Her hands had curled around her braids, stroking restlessly.

Nascha and Sahkyo swung down from their hammocks, bare feet slapping against the baked-mud floor. Without speaking, they started breakfast. While Sahkyo stacked wood in the oven, Nascha took ears of corn from the cupboard, peeled back the husks, and scraped the kernels into a bowl.

By the time she had started to mash them, a small fire had come to life in the corner of the house, Sahkyo crouched in front of it, coaxing the larger wood to burn. She had pulled her wild black hair away from her face, pinned atop her head with a bone. Crusted bits of white paint flaked around the edge of her jaw. “Peaches,” she said without looking up. “Peaches in the cupboard.”

Nascha looked up, surprised. She had planned to save them for a crisp.

“Some sugar this morning, I think,” Sahkyo added.

Nascha nodded, and when she went to the cupboard to fetch the chilies, she brought out two peaches also. She chopped them all and added them to the corn mash, then mixed in some eggs. Carefully, she wrapped the mixture into the corn husks. Then Sahkyo tucked them into the bottom of the fire.

Doli stayed in her hammock, still stroking the ridges of her braids, and Nascha didn’t push her. To resist the temptation, she went to stand at the door and look out upon the wasteland.

Across the sea of shifting dunes, glistening against the pale morning sky, she could just make out the spire. The sand might blow against it, try to bury the column of glass like it had everything else, but it stretched tall and fearsome and hubristic. Once sand itself, now melted and twisted and shaped skyward into a spear.

Nascha’s eyes slid sideways to her own spear, resting just inside the doorway. She had made it long ago, unfathomably long ago. But here, at the end of all things, a spear still held terrible power.

Beside the spear, embedded in the clay-brick wall beside the door, was a wooden circle, smooth but for a single rounded hole.

Once Sahkyo pulled the kneel-down-bread from the fire, Doli finally slipped free of her hammock and seated herself quietly on the floor to eat. They sat in a circle, each unwrapping the corn husks from her own bread.

After Doli had taken her first bite, Nascha said, “What did you dream?”

Doli didn’t answer for a time, continuing to eat. Her eyes stayed fixed close in front of her, but somewhere far away also. When ready, she said, “A rattlesnake lay resting in its hole in the ground. Above it, the world was wild. Coyotes hunted by night and by day. Wolves bit at the throats of other wolves. In the chaos, there came a young fox.

“The fox came sniffing at the snake’s hole. Then it began to dig. What was the rattlesnake to do? If it did nothing, the fox would surely destroy its home. If it struck, the fox might panic and kill the rattlesnake before the venom set in.”

They waited, but Doli did not continue. The rattlesnake had not decided.

Sahkyo cast the corn husks into the fire once they had finished. “When was it?” she asked.

“A long time ago,” Doli replied.

Nascha laughed. “Everything is a long time ago in this place,” she reminded her.

Doli stuck a foot out and kicked Nascha’s knee. “A time of wolves,” she specified. “When a dead tree lives again. She will come to us, the fox. She will come to our door.”

“Then,” said Sahkyo, letting her hair down so that it hung wild around her white face, “we will make sure our door is there for her to find.” She took up her spear and thrust the blunted end into the wheel beside the door.

Nascha got to her feet and wrapped her furs around her head. Doli stayed seated, staring intently out the door.

Grasping the spear with both hands, Sahkyo used it as a crank to turn the wheel once, twice, thrice in quick succession. A wind swept through the door as the image outside blurred. When it settled, their house was suspended above a vast ocean. Hulking, snakelike monsters arched out of the water, their jaws full of terrible teeth.

“You went too far,” Doli said. She leaned forward, an elbow on her knee, chin in her hand.

Sahkyo gave her a tired look. “I _know_ ,” she said. She cranked the wheel back once, twice. Outside, thunderous booms sounded from a sky aflame, smoke rising and ash falling. She turned it the other way, less than a quarter turn. A lush, open desert lay ahead of them, cactus thick around the base of the rock formations. In the distance, hoof beats. A clamor of voices.

“When a dead tree lives again,” Nascha quoted. “In the time of wolves.”

Sahkyo nodded and closed her eyes. She focused. Her hands barely seemed to move, tugging the spear up in the smallest of increments. A paved road appeared outside. Then, between one blink of the eye and the next, a red car. Two women stood beside it, one young and one very old.

Doli rose to her knees, crawling to the door. “Little fox,” she whispered.

Pulling her spear free of the wheel, Sahkyo said, “And what are we to do with this little fox?” They both looked to Nascha.

Taking up her own spear, Nascha smiled. The butt of her spear struck against the floor. Below it, a chasm opened, sloping down steeply into the depths of the earth. “We’re sounding the rattle,” she said.

**Author's Note:**

> I would love to hear how other people headcanon the skinwalker backstory. There are so few fics about them!
> 
> You can also come yell at me on [tumblr](https://luulapants.tumblr.com/).


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